Origins In
1936, President
Franklin D. Roosevelt was re-elected in a landslide;
Alf Landon, his Republican opponent, could only win two states. In the 1937–1939 session of Congress, the Republicans would have only 17 senators (out of a total of 96) and 89 congressmen (out of a total of 435). Given his party's overwhelming majorities, FDR decided he could overcome opposition to his liberal
New Deal policies by the conservative justices of the
Supreme Court, which had struck down many New Deal agencies as unconstitutional. Roosevelt proposed to expand the size of the court from nine to fifteen justices; if the proposal met with success, he would be able to
"pack" the court with six new justices who would support his policies. However, the
Southern Democrats, who controlled the entire South at the time with little Republican opposition, were divided between liberal and conservative factions. While the Southern Democrats included many New Deal supporters, there were also many conservatives among them who were opposed to the expansion of federal power. Among their leaders were Senators
Harry Byrd and
Carter Glass of Virginia and Vice President
John Nance Garner of Texas. U.S. Senator
Josiah Bailey (
D-
NC) released a "
Conservative Manifesto" in December 1937, which included several statements of conservative philosophical tenets, including the line "Give enterprise a chance, and I will give you the guarantees of a happy and prosperous America." The document called for a balanced federal budget,
state's rights, and an end to labor
union violence and coercion. The
Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 was the last major New Deal legislation that Roosevelt succeeded in enacting into law. A confidential British
Foreign Office analysis of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April 1943 stated that although the committee had 15 Democrats, seven Republicans, and one independent, because of the Republican-conservative Democratic alliance only 12 of the 23 members supported Roosevelt's policies. A handful of liberal measures, notably the
minimum wage laws, did pass when the conservative coalition split.
After the New Deal (1940-1960) Some infrastructure bills received conservative support, and funding for more highways was approved under both FDR and President
Dwight D. Eisenhower; Eisenhower also expanded public housing. While such liberal successes did happen, they often required negotiations between factions controlling different House committees. With conservatives heavily influencing the House agenda through the House Rules Committee and the threat of possible filibusters in the Senate (which then required a 2/3 majority to break) several liberal initiatives such as a health insurance program were stopped. Truman's civil rights act died in Congress, leaving him to use executive orders to act against segregation. Much of Truman's
Fair Deal in 1949–1951 was defeated, with exceptions such as a public housing provision when conservatives split. Truman was frustrated by continued conservative strength in Congress, in spite of liberal gains in the 1948 midterm elections. As noted by one study, "First of all, only one-third of the Senate is up for election every two years. In spite of the fact that the House has a narrow liberal majority, there are only 38 votes in the Senate wholeheartedly committed to the liberal program endorsed by the American voters last November." Also, while northern Democrats supported the Truman Administration's social welfare initiatives 91% of the time, the corresponding figure for southern Democrats was 46%. During his presidency, John F. Kennedy attempted with some success to reduce the conservative hold over the Rules Committee, which had blocked liberal reform measures over the years. As noted by one study, "By the late 1930s, the coalition succeeded in winning enough votes in the Rules Committee to prevent many Roosevelt (and later, Truman) proposals from reaching the floor, even though the measures had been reported by legislative committees of the House. Because of the seniority system, conservatives retained control of the Rules Committee in many Congresses in which, in the House as a whole, liberals were preponderant." In 1961, the House narrowly voted 217–212 in favor of a plan to enlarge the Rules Committee from 12 to 15 members. The aim of this was to provide committee liberals with a majority on most issues "and thereby prevent conservative Republicans and Southern Democrats on the Committee from blocking House floor action on liberal Administration proposals approved by legislative committees." In this the plan was successful, as the enlarged House Rules Committee gave liberals a majority; albeit a precarious one. In January 1963 the enlargement of the Rules Committee was made permanent, with the House voting 235–196 in favor. In its heyday in the 1940s and 1950s, the coalition's most important Republican leader was Senator
Robert A. Taft of
Ohio; the leading Democrats in the coalition were Senator
Richard Russell, Jr. of
Georgia and Congressmen
Howard W. Smith of
Virginia and
Carl Vinson of Georgia. Although the coalition usually voted together on urban and labor issues, they were divided on other economic issues, such as farm and Western issues (such as water). Conservative Southern Democrats generally favored high government spending on rural issues, and in this urban and liberal Democrats supported them while Republicans were opposed. For this reason, Democratic caucuses of 230 to 260 seats were enough to pass Democratic farm programs, whereas on labor issues even Houses with in excess of 280 Democratic Members could not pass labor priorities. Foreign policy goals also presented a contrast. Prior to World War II most, though not all, conservative Republicans were
non-interventionists who wanted to stay out of the war at all costs, while most, though not all, Southern conservatives were
interventionists who favored helping the British defeat
Nazi Germany. After the war, a minority of conservative Republicans (led by Taft) opposed military alliances with other nations, especially
NATO, while most Southern Democrats favored such alliances. During the post-war period, Republican presidents often owed their legislative victories to
ad hoc coalitions between conservative Republicans and conservative southern Democrats. The liberal wing of the Democratic Party (elected mainly from Northern cities and Unionized regions), on the other hand, tended to combine with Republicans from the west and the north to put their own legislation through.
Civil Rights Era (1960-1972) Under President
Lyndon Johnson, who had an intimate knowledge of the inner workings of Congress, liberal Democrats, together with Conservative and Liberal Republicans led by Senate Minority Leader
Everett Dirksen, convinced all but six Republicans to vote for
cloture on the
Civil Rights Act of 1964. This vote broke a
Southern filibuster led by Senators
Robert Byrd (D-
WV) and
Strom Thurmond (D-
SC). Though a greater percentage of Republicans than Democrats (about 80% versus 60% respectively) voted for cloture and for the bill, the 1964 GOP Presidential nominee,
Barry Goldwater (R-AZ), voted against cloture; before his presidential campaign Goldwater had supported civil rights legislation but opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on constitutional grounds, believing private individuals had the right to
choose with whom they engaged in business. The GOP was massively defeated in 1964, but recovered its strength in the congressional elections of 1966, and elected Richard Nixon president in 1968. Throughout the 1954–1980 era the Republicans were a minority in both the House and Senate, but most of the time they cooperated with Conservative Democrats. In defining the size of the Conservative Coalition in 1964, one study noted that As of adjournment Oct. 3, the potential strength of the conservative coalition was 56 of the 100 votes in the Senate and 280 of the 429 votes in the House (there were 5 vacancies and the House Speaker is not counted because he rarely votes). This constituted a winning majority in each chamber. The figures are based on a lineup of 33 Republicans and 23 Southern Democrats in the Senate and 176 Republicans and 104 Southern Democrats in the House. Counting only bare majorities of the two blocs in the coalition (the point at which the coalition is defined in this study), its strength, assuming all Members voted, would be 17 Republicans and 12 Southern Democrats in the Senate (29 total) and 89 Republicans and 53 Southern Democrats (142 total) in the House. In neither chamber would the coalition have a winning majority. Therefore, whether the coalition won or lost depended not only on how large a majority of Southern Democrats and Republicans it could muster, but also on how many votes it would win away from the opposing faction, the Northern Democrats. In
1968, Nixon and native Southerner and
American Independent candidate
George Wallace carried the same number of states in
the South. The coalition "found itself frequently allied with a conservative President against the restricted power of the Congressional liberals" in Nixon's first year as president in 1969, according to the 1969
Congressional Quarterly almanac. Conservative senators blocked an amendment that would have blocked the
Safeguard anti-ballistic missile but lacked the votes to confirm Supreme Court nominee
Clement Haynsworth. Over in the Senate, the similarly large Democratic majority modified Rule 22, which governs the filibuster, shrinking the required majority to invoke cloture in most cases from two-thirds of the Senate to the current three-fifths, or 60 votes. These actions together greatly reduced the power of the Southern Democrats to steer and block legislation in the House and Senate, and reduced the institutional benefits of being loyal to the Democratic Party. Many surviving Southern Democrats switched parties and became Republicans after that party gained a majority in 1995. Boll weevils was a political term used in the mid-to-late 20th century to describe a bloc of conservative Democrats, mostly Southerners, who remained in the
United States Congress throughout the 1970s and 1980s. These included Democratic House members as conservative as
Georgia's
Larry McDonald, who was also a leader in the
John Birch Society. During the administration of
Ronald Reagan, the term "boll weevils" was applied to this bloc of conservative Democrats, who consistently voted for Reagan administration policies, such as tax cuts, increases in military spending, and
deregulation. The boll weevils were contrasted with the "
gypsy moth Republicans"—moderate Republicans from the
Northeast and
Midwest who opposed many of
Reagan's economic policies. The
Blue Dog Coalition is considered the main successor to the conservative coalition among Democrats, as it began after the 1994 midterm elections. ==Main members==